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* TurnOfTheMillennium: The primary plotline is set in 1999, just two years after the previous season, but the change is felt. Capitalism had set in, the borders are open, the old commies are no longer the people to watch for, and computers are becoming commonplace. But computers bring along MillenniumBug concerns and Internet crime, a new generation of criminals arose looking to the West in their criminal enterprises, and democracy hands power to angry young wolves who make up for their lack of genuine anti-communist pedigrees with aggressive media posturing and unscrupulous politicking.
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* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: In flashback scenes set shortly after the war, Witek's family is shown relatively well-off largely thanks to his aunt, who is [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections in a relationship with a Soviet officer]]. While she's affectionate towards him, it's heavily implied it's a survival tactic which her family [[MyGirlIsNotASlut would find rather shady]] if they were in a position to complain. In turn, she's implied to quietly find them ungrateful for providing for them.
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* HookerWithAHeartOfGold: In flashback scenes set shortly after the war, Witek's family is shown relatively well-off largely thanks to his aunt, who is [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections in a relationship with a Soviet officer]]. While she's affectionate towards him, it's heavily implied it's a survival tactic which her family [[MyGirlIsNotASlut would find rather shady]] if they were in a position to complain. In turn, complain, that she's implied to making the best of a situation [[QuestionableConsent which may not even have been consensual at first]], and that she quietly find finds them ungrateful for her providing for them.
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* HollywoodAtheist: Downplayed (since it's not a religion), but it turns out Jass lost her faith in Tarot [[spoiler:after Teresa's death]] in a manner rather typical for this trope. (And likewise she's [[spoiler:implied to regain her faith at the end]].)
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* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Near the end, [[spoiler:Piotr releases three girls from captivity, among them Wanda, but]] one is shown falling and is left behind as the chase catches up. All we're left with is to assume it also must have ended well since the villains' operation was foiled anyway.
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* NothingButHits: The diegetic music (and non-diegetic sometimes as well) tends to be the hits of the era, getting more pronounced with each season.
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* HappyEndingOverride: [[spoiler:Teresa died in a car crash between this and previous second, leaving Jass (her new lover), Piotr (who still cared for her), and Wanda all heartbroken. Jass was behind the wheel and blames herself for Teresa's death.]]
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* HappyEndingOverride: [[spoiler:Teresa died in a car crash between this and previous second, season, leaving Jass (her new lover), Piotr (who still cared for her), and Wanda all heartbroken. Jass was behind the wheel and blames herself for Teresa's death.]]
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* MenOfSherwood: Need {{the cavalry}} to smash up a BadGuyBar fronting for a human trafficking operation, but you have gone rogue and are strapped for time? Why, sometimes it's enough to be a phone call away from a few carfuls of tough Roma guys!
* MisterSandmanSequence: The first scene of the 1964 plotline packs as many setting-establishing details as it possibly could, because it needs to differentiate itself quickly from the 1999 setting.
* MisterSandmanSequence: The first scene of the 1964 plotline packs as many setting-establishing details as it possibly could, because it needs to differentiate itself quickly from the 1999 setting.
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* SoundtrackDissonance: The 1964 plotline opens and ends with a song of the era, an upbeat one about how everything's beautiful and life is great and so on. The dissonance lies in that it's great... for the bad guys.
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* ContrivedCoincidence: Jass gets shot during a sting operation and ends up in the town's hospital, which apparently was conveniently nearby. Once she wakes and realizes where she is, she reacts with a sort of tired amusement.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Kocioł really loves his son, even in spite of [[MamasBabyPapasMaybe constant questioning of his fatherhood]] by others. [[spoiler:And the son loves his mother, as well as loves and is loved by his stepmother.]]
* TheGhost: Mika's wife, who is a nurse in the local hospital and is thus partial to knowledge and gossip which immensely helps in the investigation, but otherwise remains unseen.
* TheGhost: Mika's wife, who is a nurse in the local hospital and is thus partial to knowledge and gossip which immensely helps in the investigation, but otherwise remains unseen.
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* HumanTraffickers: The primary villains of the season's 1999 plot.
* IGaveMyWord: Jassijej's reasoning for coming back to town is to find out what happened to the hotel manager's son. [[spoiler:And for keeping the details from Jass, although he leaves her a clue.]]
* IGaveMyWord: Jassijej's reasoning for coming back to town is to find out what happened to the hotel manager's son. [[spoiler:And for keeping the details from Jass, although he leaves her a clue.]]
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* HumanTraffickers: The primary villains of the season's 1999 plot.
plotline. [[spoiler:And the 1964 plotline, except they are also [[VillainProtagonist the protagonists]].]]
* IGaveMyWord: Jassijej's reasoning for coming back to town is that he promised tofind out what happened to watch over the hotel manager's son. [[spoiler:And for keeping [[spoiler:This is also why he kept the details from Jass, although he leaves her a clue.]]
* IGaveMyWord: Jassijej's reasoning for coming back to town is that he promised to
* OneDegreeOfSeparation:
** Joanna, Piotr's new girlfriend and an archaeologist involved in excavations in Gronty, is the sister of the first season's suicide victim.
** Kinga, the junior attorney, is [[spoiler:the girl who caused the suicide of Joanna's sister]].
** The hotel manager had a letter from Elsa Koepke in his possession since the Sixties, and the man he got it from became [[spoiler:one of the two corpses unearthed by Joanna]].
** The human trafficking operation is run by [[spoiler:the estranged son of the hotel manager]].
** Anna Jass and [[spoiler:Kocioł's son]] met and befriended each other as children. Also, Jass as a little girl was indirectly responsible [[spoiler:for Kocioł becoming the hotel manager as we know him from the two previous seasons]].
** The hotel manager and [[spoiler:the murder victim from the first season]] were best friends in the Sixties.
** Joanna, Piotr's new girlfriend and an archaeologist involved in excavations in Gronty, is the sister of the first season's suicide victim.
** Kinga, the junior attorney, is [[spoiler:the girl who caused the suicide of Joanna's sister]].
** The hotel manager had a letter from Elsa Koepke in his possession since the Sixties, and the man he got it from became [[spoiler:one of the two corpses unearthed by Joanna]].
** The human trafficking operation is run by [[spoiler:the estranged son of the hotel manager]].
** Anna Jass and [[spoiler:Kocioł's son]] met and befriended each other as children. Also, Jass as a little girl was indirectly responsible [[spoiler:for Kocioł becoming the hotel manager as we know him from the two previous seasons]].
** The hotel manager and [[spoiler:the murder victim from the first season]] were best friends in the Sixties.
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* ShoutOut: Turns out the local Internet cafe doubles as a Friendly Local Gaming Store for the town's Warhammer crowd. [[note]]Not an everyday occurence, but given the overlap between video gamers and fantasy fandom, not impossible either.[[/note]]
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* ShoutOut: Turns out Folks at the local Internet are reading CD-Action, a magazine which is something of a legend of Polish video gaming, and the cafe itself doubles as a Friendly Local Gaming Store for the town's Warhammer crowd. [[note]]Not an everyday occurence, but given the overlap between video gamers and fantasy fandom, not impossible either.[[/note]]
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* WrittenInInfirmity: Kinga has [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoma_(medicine) a stoma]]. Her actress has one, so it was written as a part of the character as well, because why not.
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The first season tells a story of crime committed in communist Poland and forcibly covered up by the state, while the second season tackles the systemic and economic changes of the country that has been freshly reacquainted with capitalism and how it changes the dynamics between the characters we already met.
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* The first season tells a story of crime committed in communist Poland and forcibly covered up by the state, while the state.
* The second season tackles the systemic and economic changes of the country that has been freshly reacquainted with capitalism and how it changes the dynamics between the characters we already met.
* The third season, subtitled "Millennium", both follows the second season and delves into a series of flashbacks into the Sixties, showing how things changed and yet in many ways stayed all the same.
* The second season tackles the systemic and economic changes of the country that has been freshly reacquainted with capitalism and how it changes the dynamics between the characters we already met.
* The third season, subtitled "Millennium", both follows the second season and delves into a series of flashbacks into the Sixties, showing how things changed and yet in many ways stayed all the same.
* BadCopIncompetentCop: The town's cops are either one, the other, or both at the same time.
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* CityWithNoName: The town the story portrays has no name, but given the destruction shown in season two due to Flood of the Millenium, it's clearly intended to be somewhere [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Central_European_flood/ inbetween Legnica, Częstochowa and Katowice in southern Poland.]]
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* CityWithNoName: The town the story portrays has no name, but given name and is located in some unspecified part of Silesia.
** Given the destruction shown in season two due to Flood of the Millenium, it's clearly intended to be somewhere [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Central_European_flood/ inbetween Legnica, Częstochowa and Katowice in southern Poland.]]]]
** Third season heavily implies it's located just a short drive away from German border.
** Given the destruction shown in season two due to Flood of the Millenium, it's clearly intended to be somewhere [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Central_European_flood/ inbetween Legnica, Częstochowa and Katowice in southern Poland.
** Third season heavily implies it's located just a short drive away from German border.
* SmallTownTyrant: Basically, every season has one or two people who serve this role, although the plot usually twists right as it would seem they are the primary villain.
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* AndNowYouMustMarryMe: The coach of the local girls' swimming team married one of his wards. Years later, it's considered a cute story, but once Piotr talks to the wife it becomes obvious it was anything but.
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* AndNowYouMustMarryMe: The coach of the local girls' swimming team married one of his wards. Years later, it's considered a cute story, quaint little story of MeetCute, but once Piotr talks to the wife it becomes obvious it was anything but.
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* ShoutOut: To ''Film/{{Jurassic Park}}'', once somebody notices the town has one guy with the nickname "Reptile" and another known as "Raptor".
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[[/folder]]
[[folder: Season 3]]
* ActionSurvivor: Piotr is an unathletic, nervous journalist, yet a threat to Wanda causes him to start channeling Liam Neeson in ''Film/{{Taken}}''.
* TheAtoner: The junior attorney, Kinga. [[spoiler:She was the girl who drove the girl from the first season into suicide, thus basically kick-starting the entire series.]]
* BadCopIncompetentCop: Of all cops in the season, the only decent ones are Jass (who is an outsider), Mika (who cleaned up since last season thanks to Jass, but is still a bit of an idiot and old-fashioned on matters like [[PoliceBrutality extracting confessions]]), and Dzidzia (who is an inexperienced dork).
* TheCameo: The flashback scenes contain a lot of characters, sometimes shown, sometimes only spoken of, who were only seen in the previous seasons in the show's current day.
* TheConstant: It's lampshaded that every affair in the town seemingly must involve Witek in some way.
* DueToTheDead: Kinga and Joanna's motivations are that they owe it to the bodies of the Gronty forest for the truth to come out. [[spoiler:This is also why Kocioł's son returned -- he realized it was really his mother's corpse that was unearthed.]]
* HappyEndingOverride: [[spoiler:Teresa died in a car crash between this and previous second, leaving Jass (her new lover), Piotr (who still cared for her), and Wanda all heartbroken. Jass was behind the wheel and blames herself for Teresa's death.]]
* HumanTraffickers: The primary villains of the season's 1999 plot.
* IGaveMyWord: Jassijej's reasoning for coming back to town is to find out what happened to the hotel manager's son. [[spoiler:And for keeping the details from Jass, although he leaves her a clue.]]
* InformationWantsToBeFree: Kinga brings the results of investigation on the Gronty corpses to Witek, even though he's retired, knowing he will get the story out.
* PatrioticFervor: Kinga's superior isn't in the slightest interested in truth about the Gronty forest -- he's in it to prove that Poles and not the Germans were the victims interred there and is willing to outright lie as soon as the earliest results of a superficial investigation can be stretched to support his preconceived version of the story. The same goes for the inspector from Warsaw's Institute of National Remembrance he brings in for support. [[note]]This makes the season an odd mix of PeriodPiece and InstantlyDated -- the scenes with them are clearly meant to show the rise of the kind of right-wing politicos who would gain nation-wide recognition by the early 2000's, and who then ruled Poland since 2015 until they were ousted from power in 2023 parliamentary elections. By the time the season was written and shot, they were still in power, thus the instant datedness part.[[/note]]
* RetiredMonster: It turns out that however bad they may have appeared in the previous seasons, both the hotel manager [[spoiler:and the murdered Party member of the first season]] were really this, having settled down to their comfortable positions after a ruthless criminal youth.
* ShoutOut: Turns out the local Internet cafe doubles as a Friendly Local Gaming Store for the town's Warhammer crowd. [[note]]Not an everyday occurence, but given the overlap between video gamers and fantasy fandom, not impossible either.[[/note]]
* TheSixties: Flashback scenes in the third season are set in 1964. You can see both the pretty and the ugly side, but especially the ugly, as two small crooks strive to make their way in the world.
* SmugSnake: The new local crime lord acts big and is properly evil and ruthless, but he's bested by (consecutively) [[spoiler:a really pissed-off journalist, a vengeful victim, and an underling with overgrown ego]]. To his credit, he knows there are bigger criminal fishes than him, and he's content to stick to his piece of the pie. A minor example is the yuppie from the previous season, who thinks he's some kind of a hustler now but clearly isn't there yet. ([[spoiler:But given that he's said underling with overgrown ego, he's clearly going down that path.]])
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: It's implied the theft of the necklace, which was owned by a really well-connected person, resulted in the firing and arrest on exaggerated charges of the 1964's old hotel manager and subsequent rise in status of Kocioł. [[spoiler:Little Anuszka stole it from her mother to give to a friend.]]
[[folder: Season 3]]
* ActionSurvivor: Piotr is an unathletic, nervous journalist, yet a threat to Wanda causes him to start channeling Liam Neeson in ''Film/{{Taken}}''.
* TheAtoner: The junior attorney, Kinga. [[spoiler:She was the girl who drove the girl from the first season into suicide, thus basically kick-starting the entire series.]]
* BadCopIncompetentCop: Of all cops in the season, the only decent ones are Jass (who is an outsider), Mika (who cleaned up since last season thanks to Jass, but is still a bit of an idiot and old-fashioned on matters like [[PoliceBrutality extracting confessions]]), and Dzidzia (who is an inexperienced dork).
* TheCameo: The flashback scenes contain a lot of characters, sometimes shown, sometimes only spoken of, who were only seen in the previous seasons in the show's current day.
* TheConstant: It's lampshaded that every affair in the town seemingly must involve Witek in some way.
* DueToTheDead: Kinga and Joanna's motivations are that they owe it to the bodies of the Gronty forest for the truth to come out. [[spoiler:This is also why Kocioł's son returned -- he realized it was really his mother's corpse that was unearthed.]]
* HappyEndingOverride: [[spoiler:Teresa died in a car crash between this and previous second, leaving Jass (her new lover), Piotr (who still cared for her), and Wanda all heartbroken. Jass was behind the wheel and blames herself for Teresa's death.]]
* HumanTraffickers: The primary villains of the season's 1999 plot.
* IGaveMyWord: Jassijej's reasoning for coming back to town is to find out what happened to the hotel manager's son. [[spoiler:And for keeping the details from Jass, although he leaves her a clue.]]
* InformationWantsToBeFree: Kinga brings the results of investigation on the Gronty corpses to Witek, even though he's retired, knowing he will get the story out.
* PatrioticFervor: Kinga's superior isn't in the slightest interested in truth about the Gronty forest -- he's in it to prove that Poles and not the Germans were the victims interred there and is willing to outright lie as soon as the earliest results of a superficial investigation can be stretched to support his preconceived version of the story. The same goes for the inspector from Warsaw's Institute of National Remembrance he brings in for support. [[note]]This makes the season an odd mix of PeriodPiece and InstantlyDated -- the scenes with them are clearly meant to show the rise of the kind of right-wing politicos who would gain nation-wide recognition by the early 2000's, and who then ruled Poland since 2015 until they were ousted from power in 2023 parliamentary elections. By the time the season was written and shot, they were still in power, thus the instant datedness part.[[/note]]
* RetiredMonster: It turns out that however bad they may have appeared in the previous seasons, both the hotel manager [[spoiler:and the murdered Party member of the first season]] were really this, having settled down to their comfortable positions after a ruthless criminal youth.
* ShoutOut: Turns out the local Internet cafe doubles as a Friendly Local Gaming Store for the town's Warhammer crowd. [[note]]Not an everyday occurence, but given the overlap between video gamers and fantasy fandom, not impossible either.[[/note]]
* TheSixties: Flashback scenes in the third season are set in 1964. You can see both the pretty and the ugly side, but especially the ugly, as two small crooks strive to make their way in the world.
* SmugSnake: The new local crime lord acts big and is properly evil and ruthless, but he's bested by (consecutively) [[spoiler:a really pissed-off journalist, a vengeful victim, and an underling with overgrown ego]]. To his credit, he knows there are bigger criminal fishes than him, and he's content to stick to his piece of the pie. A minor example is the yuppie from the previous season, who thinks he's some kind of a hustler now but clearly isn't there yet. ([[spoiler:But given that he's said underling with overgrown ego, he's clearly going down that path.]])
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: It's implied the theft of the necklace, which was owned by a really well-connected person, resulted in the firing and arrest on exaggerated charges of the 1964's old hotel manager and subsequent rise in status of Kocioł. [[spoiler:Little Anuszka stole it from her mother to give to a friend.]]
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Now an index
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* DisposableSexWorker: The first season's murder mystery involves a killed sex worker, and many sex workers in the series are, according to the society portrayed, AcceptableTargets. Many are shown being physically or verbally abused.
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* DisposableSexWorker: The first season's murder mystery involves a killed sex worker, and many sex workers in the series are, according to the society portrayed, AcceptableTargets.very easy to mock. Many are shown being physically or verbally abused.
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* DeathOfAChild: On top of a murder of a sex worker, the town struggles with the death of two teenagers, apparently by suicide.
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* DeathOfAChild: On top of a murder of a sex worker, double murder, the town struggles with the death of two teenagers, apparently by suicide.
* HollywoodJehovahsWitness: [[spoiler: Adoptive]] parents of the boy found in the Gronty forest are implied to be Jehovah's Witnesses: in one scene a Kingdom Hall is clearly shown and named as such, the rituals and idiosyncrasies are fitting, but the religion is not explicitly named, instead being called an “organization”.
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* HollywoodJehovahsWitness: [[spoiler: Adoptive]] parents of the boy found in the Gronty forest are implied to be Jehovah's Witnesses: in one scene a Kingdom Hall is clearly shown and named as such, the rituals and idiosyncrasies are fitting, but the religion is not explicitly named, instead being called an “organization”.
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* RevengeByProxy: with a side order of BestServedCold and in line with the season's theme of sins of the past. [[spoiler:The kidnapping of a local businessman's son was orchestrated by a man he heavily beat some forty years earlier, when they were both teenagers. The man became infertile as a result of the beating, and now having risen to a position with enough resources to do it, he decided to take his assailant's son from him in revenge for having been deprived of a chance to have any.]]
